ENNIUS

Quintus Ennius (239 - 169 BC), regarded as the father of Latin poetry, was born of Greek parentage in Rudiae, Calabria, the “heel” of Italy. As well as Greek, he spoke Latin and the local Oscan dialect. As a Roman subject he served in Sardinia in the Second Punic War. He was still in Sardinia, presumably as a member of a garrison, in 204 BC, for there he met Cato, then praetor, who took him back to Rome. Ennius lived frugally, writing and earning a living by teaching the sons of the nobility. He was granted Roman citizenship in 184 BC.

Backstage theatrical scene with (left) two members of the chorus and flute-player, (below) tragic masks of a woman and old man, and (far right) of a man in his prime. (VRoma: House of the Tragic Poet, Pompeii: Barbara McManus)

Ennius wrote over twenty stage tragedies, mainly on Greek themes, as well as some comedies and occasional verses. His main work, on which he was engaged for the last twenty years of his life, was a massive verse history of Rome in eighteen books. For this he abandoned the rough and barely perceptible rhythms of earlier Latin poets for the stately and musical measures of the hexameter, which he forged into the epic medium later used by Virgil. We have only fragments of his work, totalling some six hundred lines, which may not be his best, but he was often quoted by later writers.